Week Three – Ron & Don: Canada’s Heartbreak, Canada’s Heart

Have to start with this: Don Cherry pays stirring tribute to Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo, two men targeted for being soldiers, and thanks Canada for demonstrating their strength, their courage and their compassion in its wake.

RAMBLINGS

Fulty leads the way with 40 points in week 3 and takes over 1st place with a 8-1 record, Haukster and Cordy each lose their first and drop to 7-1.

It’s not the newbies who have yet to win, but Erty who is o-fer this season. At least he gets another pick-up.

From Elliotte Friedman’s “30 Thoughts”

Nathan MacKinnon beat three-time Olympic short-track speed-skating gold medallist Charles Hamelin in a quick race set up by CCM. How much burst does Colorado’s tremendous forward have? A company called PowerScout hockey is starting to track both top speed and acceleration through a computer program that uses three cameras set up around a rink.

The sample size is small (one-to-six times per player), but growing, and PowerScout (for business reasons) won’t allow its videos to be posted. The data I did see was compelling. MacKinnon was not one of the quickest accelerators (Alexander Ovechkin was first among those tracked, followed by Erik Karlsson, Ryan Kesler and Taylor Hall), but only Carl Hagelin had a faster highest speed, at slightly above 37 kilometres per hour. MacKinnon was tied for second, with Phil Kessel. (You can see some of that information here)

Not yet public is tracking indicating how much a player skates at a pace above 20 kilometres per hour. I saw a little bit of that information. Only three men stayed at that speed more than 40 percent of the time with at least 10 minutes of five-on-five play. They were Hagelin (44.2 per cent of 13:36), Sidney Crosby (42.4 of 19:19) and Joe Colborne (41.7 of 12:29) (He’s still available, boys.)

POTW

He notched 4 points on Sunday night to bring his weekly total to 10. Who is it?